New York Cemeteries

[brianac]

Weekend in New York

You Can Come and Go. They’re Staying Awhile.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/11/30/travel/30weekend600.jpg Robert Caplin for The New York Times
Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn was a tourist attraction in the 19th century. Monuments there set off a view of Manhattan.

By SETH KUGEL (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/seth_kugel/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: November 30, 2008

A lot of people live in New York, which is part of what makes the city so great. But it comes with a corollary that’s a bit of a downer: a lot of people die there, too.
Multimedia

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/11/27/travel/1130-GRAVES-B.JPGSlide Show (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/11/27/travel/1130-GRAVES_index.html)A Tour of New York Cemeteries (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/11/27/travel/1130-GRAVES_index.html)

Luckily, back in the mid-19th century, someone had the foresight to set aside some future prime real estate for some pretty cool cemeteries, among them Green-Wood in Brooklyn, Woodlawn in the Bronx and Calvary in Queens. They’re all worth a visit, but for different reasons: Green-Wood has the most beautiful grounds, Woodlawn has the most intriguing monuments, and Calvary has the best views.

If you think visiting cemeteries is a bit creepy, you would never have made it as an 1860s tourist. At that time, Green-Wood Cemetery (http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/new-york/new-york-city/attraction-detail.html?vid=1194833995378&inline=nyt-classifier) — an early example of the “rural cemetery” movement imported from Europe (http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/europe/overview.html?inline=nyt-geo) — had become one of the country’s premier attractions, ranking up there with Niagara Falls (http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/new-york/niagara-falls-new-york/overview.html?inline=nyt-geo). Half a million people visited a year, and that’s just counting the live ones.

In his book “Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery: New York’s Buried Treasure,” Green-Wood’s historian, Jeff Richman, notes that New York at the time had few public parks and little public sculpture, which partly explains the attraction. He also quotes an 1866 article in The New York Times that noted “Green-Wood is as permanently associated with the fame of our city as the Fifth Avenue or the Central Park.”

And that was before so many famous people were buried there, among them F. A. O. Schwarz of toy fame, Samuel Morse of code fame, Charles Ebbets of Dodgers fame, Boss Tweed of corruption fame and Louis Comfort Tiffany (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/louis_comfort_tiffany/index.html?inline=nyt-per) of stained glass fame. It was also before the monk parrots were there — in one of the oddest twists of cemetery history, the squawking green guys escaped from a shipment at Kennedy Airport (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/k/kennedy_international_airport_nyc/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) and settled into the ornate towers of the entrance gate, where they squawk still.

Mr. Richman has also written two attractive booklets, for sale at the cemetery, that offer extraordinarily precise and detailed two- to three-hour walking tours.

Woodlawn Cemetery (http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/new-york/new-york-city/attraction-detail.html?vid=1194833995380&inline=nyt-classifier) is also a vast bucolic (albeit landscaped) refuge, but its vibe is entirely different: elaborate, often columned mausoleums make you feel at times as if you’re wandering through a scaled down amalgam of ancient Greece (http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/europe/greece/overview.html?inline=nyt-geo) and Egypt (http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/africa/egypt/overview.html?inline=nyt-geo).

Some of the mausoleums were designed by famous architects like John Russell Pope (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/john_russell_pope/index.html?inline=nyt-per) of Jefferson Memorial fame and the firm McKim, Mead & White, and are indeed impressive. But even Susan Olsen, the executive director of Friends of Woodlawn Cemetery, a nonprofit group, acknowledges that it’s a bit much. “We’re the McMansion of cemeteries,” she said

Among the many names buried with impressive memorials, there’s the Ionic-columned tomb of Augustus D. Juilliard, industrialist and benefactor of the Juilliard School (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/j/juilliard_school/index.html?inline=nyt-org), and the Egyptian-style temple, flanked by two sphinxes, that houses F. W. Woolworth. (James Cash Penney is buried nearby, and although the Woolworth mausoleum is many times grander, Mr. Penney has the last laugh: his stores are still in business.)

Not all the famous were so ostentatious. The La Guardia family monument, near which the former mayor and airport namesake Fiorello is buried, is modestly tucked under two charming mini-evergreens. Duke Ellington (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/duke_ellington/index.html?inline=nyt-per) and Miles Davis (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/miles_davis/index.html?inline=nyt-per) are across the road from each other; Mr. Davis’s grave is the more noticeable, engraved with a trumpet and a line of music (http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/music/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier) from his piece “Solar.”

Woodlawn doesn’t have the fancy guidebooks of Green-Wood, but the guards will give you a map that shows the way to its most famous residents (bring a magnifying glass). If you have a special interest in, say, Medal of Honor winners, you can call Ms. Olsen in advance (718-920-1470) and she’ll map out a walk for you.

Calvary Cemetery (http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/new-york/new-york-city/attraction-detail.html?vid=1194833995382&inline=nyt-classifier) is not as prepared for visitors. There are no free maps readily available highlighting the gravesites of famous residents, although findagrave.com (http://findagrave.com/) will even tell you what section, lot, range and grave number many of the politicians, entertainers and mobsters are in. (But it’s still impossible to find them.)

But Calvary — or more specifically First Calvary, the part south of the Long Island Expressway and west of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — is best admired for its dramatic setting: tucked in among highways, residential neighborhoods, industrial buildings and Newtown Creek, with views of Manhattan rising as a backdrop.

The best views are from Sections 7 and 48 — use the posted map to help you. Section 7 is more spectacular, as elegant obelisks and other monuments point skyward in the foreground, blending in seamlessly with the skyscrapers of Midtown far beyond, as if Ms. Chrysler and Mr. E. S. Building were buried in the distance. Section 48 has cleaner city views, but its headstones are mostly smaller and simpler, reducing the drama quotient.

If you stick around for a while, impure ideas may enter your head. Like, how much would this land be worth to real estate developers? And wouldn’t it make a great horror film to have some wrong-headed futuristic city administration allow condos to be built over the cemeteries, causing Fiorello La Guardia and Miles Davis and F. A. O. Schwarz and a handful of mobsters to rise from their graves to haunt the living?

Note: Once these thoughts do occur to you, it is time to move on to the next item on your weekend agenda.

YOUR NAME HERE

Green-Wood Cemetery, 500 25th Street, Brooklyn; (718) 768-7300; www.green-wood.com (http://www.green-wood.com/). Winter visiting hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Subway: R train to 25th Street; walk one block to cemetery.

Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx. Enter at Jerome Avenue at Bainbridge Avenue; (718) 920-0500; www.thewoodlawncemetery.org (http://www.thewoodlawncemetery.org/). Visiting hours: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Subway: No. 4 train to Woodlawn.

First Calvary Cemetery, Long Island City, Queens. Enter at Greenpoint Avenue and Gale Street; (718) 786-8000; Web site not currently working. Hours: 8 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Subway: No. 7 to 33rd Street; walk down 33rd Street, go left on Hunters Point Avenue and right on Greenpoint Avenue. Or leave the subway at the Hunters Point exit and take the Q67 bus to Greenpoint Avenue.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/travel/30weekend.html

Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[brianac]

A Tour of New York Cemeteries

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/11/30/1130-GRAVES/25876409.JPG
A lot of people live in New York, which is part of what makes the city so great. But it comes with a corollary: a lot of people die there, too. Luckily, in the mid-19th century, someone had the foresight to set aside some future prime real estate for some pretty cool cemeteries. Left, monuments set off a view of Manhattan at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Photo: Robert Caplin for The New York Times

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/11/30/1130-GRAVES/25876457.JPG
Green-Wood is a burial ground of the well-to-do like F.A.O. Schwarz, left, of toy fame, Samuel Morse of code fame, Charles Ebbets of Dodgers fame, Boss Tweed of corruption fame and Louis Comfort Tiffany of stained glass fame.
Photo: Robert Caplin for The New York Times

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/11/30/1130-GRAVES/25876405.JPG
A tour bus at Green-Wood. The cemetery was one of the country's premier attractions in the 1860s, attracting half a million people a year. The New York Times noted in an 1866 article that "Green-Wood is as permanently associated with the fame of our city as the Fifth Avenue or the Central Park."
Photo: Robert Caplin for The New York Times

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/11/30/1130-GRAVES/25876535.JPG
Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx has elaborate mausoleums."We're the McMansion of cemeteries," says Susan Olsen, the executive director of Friends of Woodlawn Cemetery.
Photo: Robert Caplin for The New York Times

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/11/30/1130-GRAVES/25876569.JPG
Among the many names buried with impressive memorials, there's the Egyptian-style temple, flanked by two sphinxes, that houses F.W. Woolworth
Photo: Robert Caplin for The New York Times

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/11/30/1130-GRAVES/25876587.JPG
The Ionic-columned tomb of Augustus D. Juilliard, industrialist and benefactor of the Juilliard School.
Photo: Robert Caplin for The New York Times

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/11/30/1130-GRAVES/25876589.JPG
Not all the famous were so ostentatious. The La Guardia family monument is modestly tucked under two charming mini-evergreens.
Photo: Robert Caplin for The New York Times

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/11/30/1130-GRAVES/25876593.JPG
The grave of Duke Ellington, who is buried across the road from Miles Davis.
Photo: Robert Caplin for The New York Times

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/11/30/1130-GRAVES/25876629.JPG
First Calvary Cemetery in Queens is best admired for its dramatic setting: tucked in among highways, residential neighborhoods, industrial buildings and Newtown Creek.
Photo: Robert Caplin for The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/11/27/travel/1130-GRAVES_index.html

Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[Merry]

City Cemeteries Face Gridlock

By MARC SANTORA

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/08/15/realestate/15cover-span/15cover-span-articleLarge.jpg
Washington Cemetery, the largest Jewish graveyard in Brooklyn, has no land left for new burial plots.
Other cemeteries in the city are in similar straits.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/08/15/realestate/jpCOVER1/jpCOVER1-popup.jpg
To accommodate more graves at Washington Cemetery, roads have been narrowed to paths.

THOSE of us among the living all know New York City can be maddeningly expensive, whether one is shopping for a $40 million mansion on Fifth Avenue or a $2,500 studio walk-up in a former tenement on the Lower East Side.

For the dead, however, virtually no amount of money will secure a final resting place in the heart of a city that is fast running out of graveyard space.

And in the parts of town where a burial plot is still available, the cost has in some cases more than tripled in less than a decade; aboveground mausoleums can fetch upward of $3 million. Cemeteries are scrambling to create more space, and as plot prices have soared, the number of cremations has also risen, with a quarter of New Yorkers choosing the less expensive alternative.

Trinity Church Cemetery in Washington Heights, the last operating graveyard in Manhattan, has stopped selling plots, offering burial only in the most “extraordinary circumstances,” or to people with long-held reservations.

The largest Jewish graveyard in Brooklyn, Washington Cemetery, ran out of land in the winter after tearing up roads and pathways to utilize every cubic inch of ground.

Evergreens and Cypress Hills, also in Brooklyn, may sprawl, but not enough, and dozens of smaller cemeteries spread across the five boroughs are squeezed, too. The city’s largest Catholic cemetery, Calvary in Queens, is close to capacity. And even the most famous of them all, Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, has only about five more years before it will be forced to stop selling plots.

More than 50 years have passed since a major cemetery was established within the city, and no new burial grounds are planned. But New Yorkers continue to die, some 60,000 a year.

Accordingly, per square foot, burial plots in centrally located cemeteries rival the most expensive real estate in the city. A private mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx can easily cost more than $1,000 per square foot.

“We have people who would like to disinter Mom and Dad and sell the graves back to make some money,” said Richard Fishman, the director of the New York State Division of Cemeteries.

There are state laws limiting the profits on resold graves, but the fact that people would be willing to go to such lengths, Mr. Fishman said, illustrates just how valuable burial plots have become.

“There is a serious shrinkage in the available grave space,” Mr. Fishman said. “How many years out for each individual cemetery depends on a number of factors, but space is definitely tight.”

Other major urban areas have taken measures to alleviate similar space crunches. London allows people to be buried upright, while cemeteries in Singapore and Sydney, among others, offer “limited tenure,” cemetery-speak for digging up bodies after a certain amount of time so that the plot can be reused.

New York City is not now contemplating graveyard evictions, although the state did pass a law several years ago that allows cemeteries to take over empty plots bought more than 75 years ago if the owner cannot be reached. Maple Grove in Queens has already reclaimed more than 150 graves, and many other cemeteries are taking similar action, state officials said.

In fact, cemetery operators have begun to resort to the kind of creative use of space that many a Manhattan landlord might envy — squeezing coffins into every barren inch, narrowing paths, stacking coffins nine-deep.

“We are apparently one of the first that ran out of burial space,” said Dominick Tarantino, who runs Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, “but the other ones, I don’t think they are too far behind me.”

From his office, the rumble of the F train can be heard as it slices through the graveyard. Look in any direction from the elevated platform at the Bay Parkway stop, and the crowding is evident, with graves pushing up against auto-body shops, apartment buildings and busy intersections. The paths are just wide enough for a golf cart; the old roads were sacrificed to tombstones. Coffins have to be unloaded from hearses outside the gate.

“We have had bribes offered, sure,” Mr. Tarantino said. “But we have nothing to be bribed for. We have no room.”

Just as the architecture on a city street reveals the history of the time, so do the headstones in the graveyard, which was established in 1841. There are the extravagant monuments favored in the 1920s, reminders of the boom before the Depression. Tiny white sandstone markers — the “baby graves,” as the head groundskeeper, Charlie Anderson, calls them — pop up in clusters, their fading dates coinciding with various epidemics.

On newer headstones, almost uniformly made of black marble, etched portraits of the deceased stare out at visitors. This is the style favored by the Russian Jews from neighboring Brighton Beach, who have been pleading for more room to bury their dead.

The cemetery has made a bid on an adjacent house. Even though the owner is asking a hefty sum — $1.4 million, down from $1.8 million — for a small house that sits on less than an acre of land, it makes economic sense for the cemetery to buy it.

But before Washington acquires more turf, Mr. Tarantino has quite a few bureaucratic hurdles to clear, including securing the approval of the City Council.

“The city does not make it too easy for us to buy land for cemetery use,” he said one recent afternoon before heading off to meet with political leaders. If the cemetery does get the property, there is little doubt the plots will go quickly.

“Even if he could only make 400 new plots, they would sell in a week,” said Mr. Fishman of the Division of Cemeteries.

The price for a plot before the cemetery ran out of them was $12,000. New plots would very likely be even more expensive.

“Any little piece of land, we are really getting a premium for,” Mr. Tarantino said. And when he says little piece of land, he means that literally.

Despite the bulging waistlines that have necessitated bigger casket sizes across the country, Washington Cemetery is strict: no caskets more than 26 inches wide.

“They got to squeeze them into the box,” Mr. Anderson said.

The plots themselves are 30 inches wide, 7 feet long and 6 feet deep. They are so close to one another that as workers prepared a site for a burial earlier this month, they had to make sure that the coffins buried in neighboring plots did not tumble into the new grave.

It might seem that an enterprising developer could find a way to make a lucrative business out of providing burial space.

But that has not happened.

First, by law, cemeteries in New York State must be nonprofit institutions. There are 35 privately owned cemeteries in the city and several dozen with religious affiliations. The closer to Manhattan and major transportation, the more crowded and expensive a burial ground will be. Farther away, particularly in Staten Island and parts of the Bronx, space is available. The indigent of New York City are buried on Hart Island in Long Island Sound.

Woodlawn, which was part of Westchester County when it was founded in 1863 but was later incorporated into the Bronx, still has burial room. It hopes to be able to offer graves for another 40 to 50 years, but that relative abundance hasn’t kept its prices down.

“We want to have enough saved so that the income from the trust, once we are closed and have nothing left to sell, is enough to maintain the cemetery,” said John P. Toale Jr., the president of Woodlawn.

While there is a space crunch in the city, there is more space in the suburbs, and cemeteries in upstate New York can barely give away plots, state officials said. Many New Yorkers who struggled and saved to live in the city end up buried elsewhere.

Even as the broader real estate market languished in the recession, prices for graves in the city continued skyward. The state regulates the fees a cemetery can charge for services like excavation, but graves sell at market price. So burial plots are a cemetery’s revenue-generator.

However, the trust funds set up by cemeteries to provide income for operating costs have taken a hit, just as other institutional investments have. The number of people buying graves as part of estate planning has also dropped significantly, cemetery officials said. One reason for the decline is that 25 percent of all those who die in the city are opting to be cremated, up from 10 percent a little over a decade ago.

Prices vary from cemetery to cemetery. At land-rich Woodlawn, a single-depth grave for one starts at $6,995. A double-depth plot begins at $7,995, and a family plot ranges from $64,995 to $1.575 million.

At Green-Wood, the sprawling cemetery in Brooklyn, space is harder to come by, and entry-level prices for in-ground burial reflect this, starting at $11,000.

At Trinity’s graveyard in Washington Heights, in-ground plots are sold only in extraordinary circumstances, as when former Mayor Edward I. Koch asked that a special Jewish enclave be created in the Episcopal cemetery so that he could be laid to rest in the heart of the city he once ran. He paid $20,000 for the privilege.

Like other cemeteries short on space, Trinity has resorted to aboveground crypts, which start at $9,000.

Now that an end to plot sales is in sight, Green-Wood is seeking to transform its image, according to Richard J. Moylan, its president. The graveyard charges admission for guided tours, giving people a chance to saunter through time among the tombstones of the notable and the notorious. The hope is that it will become much like Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, a magnet for tourists.

For now, though, most city cemeteries are not so much concerned with drawing the living as finding room for the dead.

And as is true in all real estate, it’s about location. Just as the apartment-hunter pays more to be near a park or to secure a sweeping view, the address within the cemetery often affects the price tag.

Being buried under a tree is more desirable than being out in the open. A plot that is easy to get to can be more valuable than one in the back 40. A neighborhood of ornate Victorian marble can cost more than an avenue of flat, mowable markers. And then there are the specific needs and wants of different cultural groups.

For instance, many Asians prefer to be buried on hilltops.

“The Chinese especially, they will literally buy the whole mountaintop,” Mr. Fishman said. “They would pay a fortune for that.”

Even a fortune, however, cannot buy a hilltop once there are no more hilltops to be bought.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/realestate/15cov.html?_r=1